In the period between 2013 and 2016, Keith Schembri kept a very low profile: he was avoiding the limelight whenever official photos were taken, he never gave interviews to the media, he was always taking a back seat while his political master wallowed in the glory.
February 2016 changed all this. In this month, Daphne Caruana Galizia revealed the Maltese chapter of the Panama Papers saga and, all of a sudden, I came to realize that Keith was a power monger of enormous proportions, in direct contact with a number of important business people.
The list of business people who, in some way or another, were connected to Keith, included Adrian Hillman of Allied Newspapers, Pierre Sladden of BVI and Cypriot company fame, Shanghai Electric's Chen Ching, Keith's childhood associate Yorgen Fenech, of the Tumas Group, Malcolm Scerri and who knows how many others.
Apart from the businessmen, it became obvious that other leading Maltese politicians, including Minister Konrad Mizzi, were also working in close unison with Keith Schembri. Brian Tonna was to act as link between Keith and them.
Schembri’s transformation from a leading businessman into a possible Maltese-bred rascal came about with his being mentioned first by Melvin Theuma and then by Yorgen Fenech as having some sort of connection with the Daphne Caruana Galizia assassination.
With the arrest of Yorgen Fenech, and especially after Angelo Gafa’ replaced the inept fenek-eater Cutajar at the helm of the police corps, Keith Schembri was arrested at least a couple of times and/or put on police bail. His actions and business interests came under closer scrutiny and indeed, last September, around forty to fifty companies belonging to him had their assets frozen.
In reality, business continued as usual for Keith: for example, on 29th October 2020, Kasco Ltd won a contract with Silvio Schembri’s Ministry, for “the supply and delivery of A4 and A3 Xerographic paper” while during the present Xmas festivities certain local councils were delivering little hampers containing slices of fruit cakes distributed by Kasco.
November’s testimony by Keith Schembri in the Daphne assassination Inquiry was turned into an “I will pay you all back” session.
His first target was Saviour Balzan of Malta Today. Balzan had been a self-confessed confidant of Keith Schembri, but when he realized that he had been tricked and used by Keith to spin certain stories in such a way as to deviate attention from the alleged real authors of the assassination, he immediately denounced him, stating that Schembri “used his powerful position to influence the powers that be and to divert attention from the real culprit or culprits.”
In his testimony, Kasco got his back on Balzan, when he revealed that “Certain journalists [like Saviour Balzan] lobby about TV programmes. I think it is highly unethical. That you come to my office and demand things...”.
The second person who Schembri damned in his testimony during the Inquiry was Joseph Muscat himself. At the end of the five hour long session, Keith fired his broadside, when he declared that he had never done anything behind Joseph Muscat’s back, thus implying that the former Prime Minister was aware of episodes linked to the aftermath of Daphne’s assassination, such as the fact that Melvin Theuma had been given a job by Sandro Craus of the OPM.
A third person seems to be James Piscopo, since we recently learned that Keith allegedly made use of the services of Yorgen Fenech and PN’s Pierre Portelli to nail his former PL buddy.
As regards a possible fourth person, this is just based on my reading and supposition of the situation and not on Schembri’s direct testimony. This fourth person could possibly be Robert Abela.
Abela has recently been outed as having revealed the irregular tax position of his political rival, Bernard Grech, to the tax commissioner, Marvin Gaerty. This was an extremely unethical move by the Prime Minister, who took advantage of his public office to communicate with a public official.
Such a leak to the press could only come from either Abela or Gaerty themselves, or the policeman in charge of Yorgen’s WhatsApp messages or a man with many connections…maybe Keith Schembri?
Why do I surmise it could be so? In December of last year it was revealed that Robert Abela had denounced Keith Schembri in cabinet as a “kurnut”. (a cuckold). A “spy” in cabinet informed Keith Schembri, who immediately phoned up Lydia Abela to tell her, in a mafia style warning, that he knew what her husband had said about him.
Was the recent leak about Abela sneakily reporting Grech’s tax situation to Gaerty, Schembri’s revenge for having been denounced as a “kurnut”? And, does il-Kasco have more up his sleeve about our Prime Minister?
Interesting times ahead.
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